I have had the most blissfully unproductive weekend, it's been absolutely wonderful.
( friday night )( saturday and sunday )4. Sunday dinner was bacon and eggs on Awesome Toast. Awesome Toast is toast made out of Awesome Bread, which I made Friday and am now going to tell you all about. Because it's awesome.
About a week ago I made
Dish & Delaney's Caramelised Onion Bread which, if you read the ingredients list, you will see is full of things that I enjoy having in my life in a very serious way (rosemary, salt, cumin, caramelised onion, yeast breads, etc etc) and indeed I adored this bread. But it's definitely party bread, not the kind of thing you make every day, and it's just not very versatile. Plus onion takes a really long time to caramelise. I wanted to make a bread with similar flavours that would be better for everyday use, like toast, or to freeze and eat in lunches, or with soup, or with bacon and eggs for a lazy Sunday dinner.
So as I was doing my weekly-ish batch of my standard bread (a great flexible recipe I got off my flatmate Lizzie), I made a few alterations, and I produced a loaf of bread I'm really pleased with. It was just darn delicious.
Awesome BreadNote: Awesome Bread has quite a strong flavour and isn't recommended for most kinds of sandwiches. Make a judgement call. I do think it would be great for roast beef sandwiches &c, though. It's great plain or with a little butter or marge, too.
You can leave out entirely, or swap out for other things, the rosemary, fennel, cumin, etc. I mean your bread won't really taste like anything except flour, but on the other hand you will be able to put Nutella on it, so.2 t honey
1 1/2 t dried yeast
1 C lukewarm water (you might want this to go up by 1/4 cup, which is what the recipe I based this on calls for; I personally find that too much.)
3 C flour
2 t salt
1 T poppy seeds
1 heaped t ground fennel (I had to go to Moshim's to get this, but it was cheap there anyway.)
1 t dried rosemary (if I had fresh I would have tried that, about 1 T)
olive oil
ground cumin
sea salt/rock salt/flaky delicious salt
1. In a small bowl, dissolve honey in 1/4 C of the water, and sprinkle yeast over. Leave for 5 mins or until foamy.
2. Sift flour and salt into a larger bowl. Add poppy seeds, fennel and rosemary and toss to combine.
3. Create a well in the centre of the flour and pour in yeast mixture. Mix to form a sticky dough.
4. Turn out on lightly floured bench and knead until smooth and elastic - about 2 mins. Rise dough in an oiled bowl until tripled in size - supposedly about 1 hour, could be more (I think my yeast is pretty ancient and this took awhile.)
5. Punch down, turn out onto bench again and knead for another two minutes. Decide at this point if you want a braided bread, rolls, or a loaf.
6. For a braided bread, separate dough into three, braid as usual, and place on greased baking tray (or whatever. I am becoming devoted to silicon mats for all cookie, bread, etc needs). For rolls, divide into eight portions and roll into balls, place on tray. For a loaf, divide in half, roll into two balls, and place in loaf tin. Cover with a tea towel and rise for 30 mins, or until doubled in size.
7. Brush loaf/rolls with olive oil and dust over the ground cumin. Scatter with sea salt.
8. Bake at 190 C (375 F) for 35 minutes or until browned; the bottom of the loaf should sound hollow when tapped (basically, it should be like bread.)
9. Eat it in the manner of your people. I personally am finicky about letting bread cool before slicing it, because I like my slices to be shaped like actual slices and to be fairly thin, not sort of thick squashed slabs. But I'm aware orthodoxy differs on this point. I recommend it with butter or marge.
Ta-da! Awesome Bread. I've been eating it nonstop for three days.
5. It really, really bugs me the way, when you're playing music in Windows Media Player and you've adjusted the size of the window, it's impossible to see what song is playing. Grrrr. Also I'm just generally not a fan of that thing it does where it flashes between title and artist. I want to be able to see the title, artist and album of whatever song I'm playing without having to wait fifteen seconds for whatever to change.
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